SEO for Bing

If you haven’t heard
of Bing yet —
Microsoft’s latest
branded search
engine — you soon
will because they
have committed
more than $80 million
to advertising.

While it remains to be seen if this
latest search entry will wrestle
any significant market share from
Google, it’s a good idea to get familiar
with Bing.com, from an
SEO perspective.

Bing is branded as a “decision
engine,” enabling users to make
better choices by drilling deeper
through search results filtering.
The jury is still out on whether it
produces what it’s advertising, but if Bing can provide a
positive search experience, it might just eat away at Google’s
search dominance. Even if its impact is far less groundbreaking,
Bing will be a significant source of traffic, making
it worthy of attention.

Digging into Bing

Bing broke down its core searches into four categories: Travel,
Shopping, Health and Local. The goal is to provide users with
relevant results, faster. For some popular large search volume
search queries, Bing organizes results into categories which
Microsoft calls the “Explore Pane” and links within are called
“Quick Tabs.” Important to SEO is that Bing is constantly
tweaking which categories show up for a given search. So it’s
important not to focus on trying to rank for one of these
“Quick Tabs,” as they will undoubtedly change. Instead,
focus on where you have the most control.

Start by performing searches on Bing.com for
your brand, website, and relevant keywords. But
before trying to gain better rankings, focus on improving
your existing rankings.

Title and description are coming directly from and tags. You
don’t want to drastically change your title tag, because
it may affect ranking on the other search engines
like Google. Be sure to have a meta description
that compels the searcher to click your listing and it
accurately describes your page’s content.

The presentation of Sitelinks on Bing is unique.
The anchor text comes directly from the anchor
text on your internal pages, so make sure it’s descriptive
and not just text like “Click Here.” You
want the searcher to click on these links because
these pages are often the highest converting on your
website. Now that Bing and Google display
Sitelinks, it’s yet another reason to make sure your
site navigation and structure are SEO-friendly. As it
stands, Bing does not give webmasters any control (within
its Webmaster Center: http://www.bing.com/webmaster) like
Google does with its webmaster console.

Learn more about
optimizing your website
for competitive positions
on Microsoft’s new
Bing.com decision
engine.

The Quick Preview feature presents an advanced preview
of the page when users hover their cursors over a search
result, and is an area of significance to monitor. The preview
contains a longer description of the page, internal links on
the page, phone numbers, e-mails and physical addresses. To
leverage this feature, consider adding these elements to every
one of your pages listed. This will attract more leads, boost
the trustworthiness of your website and ultimately lead to
higher conversions.

Image and video search play a significant role on Bing,
and are gaining popularity with users. Continue spending
time optimizing images with alt tags and tagging videos with
descriptive keywords, and monitor performance closely.
Shopping is a focus of the Bing search platform. If you
manage an e-commerce site, you know that user reviews
continue to be a factor in driving conversions. Ratings are
provided directly within Bing from CitySearch.com, Judysbook.
com and Yelp.com. Make sure your site is listed on these
websites and encourage your new and current clients to rank
and review your business.

Local Search is a core competency and a big part of Bing.
If your site/business is not listed on a Bing Maps search, add
your profile in the Listing Center. If your business is already
listed, check to make sure information is accurate and up-todate.
Information that can be edited includes Web page and
business description, hours of operation, payment methods,
photos, year established, company tagline, brands carried,
specialties, professional affiliations, languages spoken, parking
options and even a personal contact. Since users might see
this information, take advantage of the opportunity in this
feature and fill out as many fields as possible. The more information
you provide to the searcher, the more likely they
are to do business with you.

While Bing is still a distant third when it comes to search,
its 10 percent market share includes a significant amount of
traffic, so keep track of how you’re performing. Bing also
opens the door to Decision Engine Optimization (DEO). As
search continues to evolve, it’s important for all SEOs to stay
in touch of the ever-changing search landscape.